214 listed buildings, 3 of them Grade I

The Waterfront Museum, Local History CentreGrade I listedSir Peter Thompson HouseGrade I listedSt Dunstan of Canterbury Orthodox ChurchGrade II* listedThe Guildhall TavernGrade II listedFormer lock-up attached to north end of the Town CellarsGrade II listed+21See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

1893

1900

1903

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

High Street27 listed · 2 II*

Market Street12 listed · 1 II*

Wallisdown Road12 listed

Church Street6 listed

St James's Close5 listed

Thames Street4 listed

Market Close3 listed

Of the 214 entries, 81 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 68 entries were listed in 1954, 3 of the 3 Grade I buildings among them. 76 came in 1974, in the national resurvey of the 1970s and 80s. Only 5 have been added in the last 15 years.

1 scheduled monument

Nationally important archaeological sites and monuments, protected by law; work on them needs consent from the Secretary of State, advised by Historic England.

4 registered parks and gardens

Compton AcresGrade II*

Poole CemeteryGrade II

Poole ParkGrade II

Upper, Central and Lower Pleasure Gardens, and Coy Pond GardensGrade II

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

Michael Francklin

James Stephen

John Stephen

James Warren Childe

William Hooper

Thomas Bell

Robert Cribb

Benjamin Cribb

Samuel Henry Strong

Augusta Webster

Augustus Hamilton

Alicia Amherst

Oswald Yorke

George Brown

Mary Butts

George Devereux Belben

170017501800185019001950

Thomas Bell1792–1880 · English zoologist, surgeon and writer (1792–1880)

Alicia Amherst1865–1941 · English horticulturist, botanist (1865-1941)

Augusta Webster1837–1894 · English poet, dramatist, essayist and translator

Mary Butts1890–1937 · British novelist (1890–1937)

James Stephen1758–1832 · British lawyer, slavery abolitionist and politician

Samuel Henry Strong1825–1909 · 3rd Chief Justice of Canada (1825–1909)

AH

Augustus Hamilton1853–1913 · New Zealand ethnologist, biologist and museum director (1853-1913)

James Warren Childe1778–1862 · English miniature painter

Everyone born in Poole → Birthplaces from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons.

Poole has 214 listed buildings, 3 of them Grade I, including Poole Museum. Scaplen's Court sits at the heart of it all, with 3 of the town’s Grade I buildings within 400 m. High Street alone has 27 listed buildings. Its older streets lie in 14 conservation areas, the first designated in 1975.

Of the whole list, 51% are houses, terraces and villas. Of the 16 people born here before 1900, the best known include Thomas Bell (1792), Alicia Amherst (1865) and Augusta Webster (1837). Beyond that, it has 3 Grade I buildings, about typical for a town its size (the middle one has 3); per resident it sits near the middle of UK towns; and it also has a scheduled monument.